City Slicker Farms Breaks Ground On New Urban Park and Farm in West Oakland

Linked by Michael Levenston

The 1.4-acre lot at 28th and Peralta streets aims to create a more reliable source of fresh produce.

By Madeleine Key
East Bay Express
January 30, 2013

Excerpt:

In the last decade, organizations such as People’s Grocery, Phat Beets Produce, and City Slicker Farms have emerged to create a more equitable food system in Oakland. But while the growing urban agricultural movement has led to an increase in urban homesteading and farming, the issue of land security remains a top challenge, because most people lease or rent the land they farm on. Now, the nonprofit City Slicker Farms (which, in the interest of full disclosure, I have volunteered for in the past) hopes to change that dynamic.

On January 31, representatives from the California Department of Parks and Recreation and Senator Barbara Boxer’s office will gather to celebrate the development of a new community resource for fresh produce in West Oakland — the transformation of a vacant industrial lot at 28th and Peralta streets into an urban park and farm. A project of City Slicker Farms, the West Oakland Park and Urban Farm will reside on a 1.4-acre lot and plans to include lawn space for running and playing, a vegetable growing area, a community garden, a fruit orchard, a chicken coop, a beehive, and a dog run.

Edible City is a fun, fast-paced journey through the local Good Food Movement that’s taking root in the San Francisco Bay Area, across the nation and around the world. Introducing a diverse cast of extraordinary and eccentric characters who are challenging the paradigm of our broken food system, Edible City digs into their unique perspectives and transformative work— from edible education to grassroots activism to building local economies— finding hopeful solutions to monumental problems. Inspirational, down-to-earth and a little bit quirky, Edible City captures the spirit of a movement that’s making real change and doing something truly revolutionary: growing the model for a healthy, sustainable local food system.